FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX

iineedasername about 4 hours ago 18 commentsRead Article on fortune.com

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nickandbro•about 1 hour ago

A lot of people are saying it’s disconnected, but even if it was, if a string of your country’s top rocket experts started disappearing, you wouldn’t just sit idly by

himata4113•about 2 hours ago

This appears to be for investigating how many scientist have left the US sponsored by state powers. But this also seems like bad communication on the FBI and perhaps poor publishing.

I think there is some confusion that there are more people going missing and dying in the sector while not outlining that there are more people going missing AND dying.

Or I'm just completely wrong, the only reason why I am making such assumptions because there is more information about this in the ASML case where a whisleblower leaked that china has poached ASML engineers and have given them new identities to work in chip manufacturing sector in china.

neurocline•about 2 hours ago

Once I saw “James Comer” I knew I could ignore this.

t0lo•about 1 hour ago

James Coomey

defrost•22 minutes ago

From article:

  Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs, sent letters to FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, requesting staff-level briefings no later than April 27.

James Richardson Comer Jr. (R-Ky.)

  Not to be confused with James Comey.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comer

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey

coppsilgold•40 minutes ago

One more addition to the conspiracy theories:

    The frequency of fireballs in our planet’s skies seemed to grow in recent months. NASA and other meteor experts can’t agree on what explains it.

...

    In response to growing public interest, a NASA public affairs official said in a blog post at the end of March, “While it may seem like meteor reports and sightings have been more frequent recently, it is not out of the ordinary.” The post explained that from February to April, there is often a 10 to 30 percent increase in the number of extremely luminous meteors — and nobody is quite sure why.


    Mr. Hankey said that this 10 to 30 percent increase was already baked into the American Meteor Society tally, and that it doesn’t explain the apparent doubling of fireball sightings in the year’s first quarter.

<https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/science/march-fireballs-m...>

wmf•about 2 hours ago

I don't have the link but someone estimated the number of scientists working in the defense field (it's a lot) and the number of deaths per year you'd expect (over 100). There's probably nothing here. It probably doesn't hurt to have the FBI take a second look at any death of somebody who has a security clearance or is working on export-controlled tech, but OTOH that might be a lot of work.

xbar•about 2 hours ago

Deaths and mysterious deaths are not at all the same. Mysterious deaths and vanishings become increasingly rare the higher up the socio-economic curve you climb.

It is not surprising that the FBI did not detect an actual pattern before now, considering the various ways that the entirety of it spent the entirety of 2025.

deathlight•about 1 hour ago

So are you saying that each of these "experts" is not an actual top of field expert but merely one of hundreds of expert cogs (per field!) in a giant machine so vast that of course some of them will crashout, be kidnapped, blackmailed, die outright, agree to a global government psyop, etc? But that's so much less fun, especially when you consider the espionage angle.

xer0x•about 1 hour ago

Odd, I saw this bubble up on social media this week as a tinfoil hat curiosity. I don't know what's real anymore.

contingencies•31 minutes ago

There's good news and bad news. Unfortunately they're the same news. Given the rapid dissolution of any sort of publicly verifiable 'news' outlet, and the abject commercialization of media, plus the doublespeak of politicians and businesses, the PR industry, self-censorship in response to cancel-culture and other divisive popular behavioral trends, and the replication crisis in science - it's not just you. It's everyone.

mmooss•about 2 hours ago

The article doesn't seem to reveal the source of its information about these alleged disappearances. Is it the letters from the members of Congress?

Also, what interest would a foreign power have in planetary defense against asteroids? Is there some dual-use technology in that?

m3kw9•about 1 hour ago

Something about ufo conspiracy theories.

F7F7F7•about 3 hours ago

Turns out scientists die too?

ozten•about 2 hours ago

> the concentration of deaths and disappearances within such a small, specialized field as defying ordinary probability.

The best conspiracy theory I've seen online is that top-secret energy/weapons plans were sold by a traitor, and these scientists were kidnapped to be the worker bees.

Terribly dark and implausible, but also, we are living through a storyline that writers wouldn't even consider a draft because it's too on-the-nose.

deathlight•about 1 hour ago

Now that's a fun one, where did you hear that from? Other ones I've seen include; tit for tat revenge for the assassination of Iranian nuke scientists; a global conspiracy of illuminati/masons/"jews" (defined so broadly as to be useless); chinese interdiction (kidnapping, a-la the reverse of the subplot in nolan's the dark knight film - that is essentially what you said); bankers who own everything and subvert everything to their interests (which remains stickily plausible to me); of course we can't forget our favorite: ancient aliens been doing all of this from the beginning. Anything to absolve people of confronting their own DNA and the predator/prey dichotomy that rules most life forms.

imglorp•about 3 hours ago

How many of the disappearances were defections?

ghstinda•about 3 hours ago

Doesn't seem connected, but makes a nice film. I think ignorance is bliss and due to the current climate, many people checking out...